Premier Boxing Champions is back with another spectacular sham fight announcement for a major event waste of airspace featuring a big-name fighter in a tough, meaningful absolutely pointless contest against a respected top contender fighter nobody has ever heard of.
This time, it’s heavyweight titleholder – definitely not heavyweight champion – Deontay Wilder taking on Johann Duhaupas, touted as a “French Heavyweight Contender”.
If you’re unfamiliar with him, you’re not the only one. While he’s coming off a majority decision win over Manuel Charr, he’s just a fight removed from losing to Erkan Teper. Boxrec may have dubious rankings, but they have Duhaupas slotted in at #34 in the world, which if anything may be generous.
For Deontay Wilder, this is his 2nd straight fight against an absolute no-hoper, coming off his match against Eric Molina.
For Premier Boxing Champions, which also recently announced this laughable Peter Quillin headlined event, this continues their trend of putting together awful fights, with ridiculous B-side opponents, allowing their “stars” to have an easy turn in the spotlight.
Worst of all is that this fight headlines a primetime card on NBC. Boxing has returned to network television, it has a Saturday night primetime time slot, and fans will see Wilder vs. Duhaupas, with breathless announcers telling us about how this is a “heavyweight world championship” match. This has got to stop.
Frankly, it’s beyond me how television executives let themselves get talked into this kind of thing from Al Haymon. Having Wilder defend his title for the 2nd straight time against a wildly outclassed opponent is bad enough. Having to hear it called a “heavyweight world championship” fight is insulting to our intelligence. Putting it as a headline event on network television is absolutely making a mockery of the sport.
